BARRE, Vt. (AP) – A world away from the southern California rock scene that she was born into, Ariel Zevon’s dream is taking root.

The place: A vacant former department store building where tradesmen and other workers are busily installing kitchen equipment, food preparation tables and walk-in freezers.

Zevon, 30, the daughter of late rocker Warren Zevon, is renovating the leased building into a year-round farmers’ market and cafe specializing in Vermont-grown produce and supplies.

She sees it as a vehicle to give small Vermont farmers and locally produced food a retail outlet. She also wants to use it to promote so-called “food security.”

“Food security, meaning that as a community, you can sustain yourself on the food that’s readily available and grown and raised locally, so that if there were a crisis, we’d have food here to sustain us,” she said Tuesday. “Supporting small farms and smaller-scale food harvesting and processing enables less risk factor than a mass industrial food chain, where you get things like the spinach scare last year.”

It’s a cause she believes in, even if she isn’t exactly homegrown – in Vermont, anyway.

Born in Los Angeles, Zevon – whose famous dad split with her mother when she was 2 – trained to be an actress from the age of 6. She eventually landed roles on television’s “ER” and “The Shield” but called it quits on Hollywood and in 2004 moved to Vermont, where she had studied theater and sociology at Marlboro College as an undergraduate.

She and husband Ben Powell bought a house in Barre and moved here with their twin sons – Augustus Warren and Maximus Patrick.

A former waitress and short-order cook, she got the idea for her project because she objected to buying foods shipped from out of state that were also being produced locally. After researching food co-ops, grocery stores and specialty food stores across New England, she decided to found her own market.

In search of a location, she unsuccessfully bid on an abandoned firehouse the city of Barre was selling before finding a home in the 10,000-square foot former department store. Financing it with a combination of business loans, her own capital and revenues from fundraising events, she plans a market and 35-seat cafe that also includes a kids’ play area where shoppers and diners can leave their children while they tend to business.

Whether it succeeds is an open question.

Veteran organic farmer Alan LePage, 55, of Barre Town, hopes it does. But it’s uncharted territory, he says.

“It’s a damned good thing there’s folks like Ariel Zevon willing to risk their necks doing stuff like this,” said LePage.

“The retail markets are pretty limited, and mostly not very favorably oriented to local growers. The supermarkets could care less. You have to have a huge quantity to ship to a distant warehouse to be distributed, which militates against almost every produce grower in Vermont, except the very largest.

“Even with the health food stores and co-ops, the percentage of the produce they buy locally is small. That has to do with the fact that they rarely reach out to farmers like Ariel has and include them in the decision-making process of retail operations,” said LePage, an unpaid member of LACE’s board.

Its ancillary benefit may be for residents of Barre’s downtown, according to Mayor Thomas Lauzon.

“There is no grocery in the downtown area, something that’s absolutely needed,” he said.

“She and her husband, Ben, are impressive people. It’s no lip service. They have a genuine commitment and believe in what they’re doing, in that sense of community,” said Lauzon, who said he expected the market to be “wildly successful.”

Zevon’s feelings as she gears up for the opening?

“A mixture of sheer terror and, “What have I done to myself?’ and excitement,” she said.

The market and cafe, which open June 10, are getting a boost from one of Dad’s old friends: Jackson Browne will play a pair of $75-a-ticket benefit concerts to raise money for Zevon’s operation.

Browne, who is Ariel Zevon’s godfather, will appear June 9 and June 10 at the Barre Opera House and is expected to raise about $60,000 for LACE.

“He’s always been very generous to me and to our family,” she said.

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On the Net:

LACE: http://lacevt.org

Barre Opera House: http://www.barreoperahouse.org/